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California drought declaration

As noted in the article, fires will be much more common, firefighters will be hired of necessity, agricultural crops will have irrigation water diverted to other uses. Well drillers should see a bonanza as almond growers drill wells in record numbers. What will be the impact on almond pollination which should start in @3 weeks? Probably will reduce the bloom period and quality of bloom. Growers may deliberately pull bees out of almonds early to avoid higher fruit set which drives increased water requirements by the trees.

Re: California drought declaration

No surprise here, we haven't had a good winter in 3 years.
With almond bloom only a couple weeks away, I'd be surprised if they make any changes until after bloom. At that time they might cut down some of the old orchards that need to be replaced anyway, & divert that water to the younger trees.
Some of the growers who also grow row crops just won't plant them this year, & divert that water to nuts.
Then you have the growers who just got too greedy & planted every acre they can find in almonds knowing darn well the conditions of growing in the central valley, etc

Re: California drought declaration

Yup.

My county has had a total of 2.43 inches recorded in the 2013 calendar year. Long-term average (85 years) is 22.6". In the 2013-14 winter rain season, we have had 0.63" (September-January). Long term average for the comparable period is 12.27"

Almonds (in a Orland Ca study) get about 5 inches of precip, and use about 5 inches of soil storage along with about 34 inches of irrigation (for a total of about 44 inches of total water use). The can be managed under a "Deficit Irrigation" scheme -- held to a minimum during summer -- and the supplemental irrigation held to about 27 inches. Hard to do when there is no soil water, however. Bud differentiation happens in the autumn, so droughty trees go light the following year. Trees under drought stress in summer have shells that don't split and are graded down.

Almonds get the first irrigation of the season, so the annual summer crops (cotton, melon, etc) may be most affected or completely fallowed. Winter deliveries are already being eliminated, so orchard farmers trying to bank water by over-irrigation in the soil are out-of-luck. Where the local Ca bees will move after the almonds and fruit bloom is a mystery to me.

Almonds have lower irrigation demand than grapes -- so we may see vinyard > orchard conversion accelerate. This is already happening as export crop almonds have a higher return than the vinyard oversupply.

My guess is almonds will see export/consumer substitution of cheaper nuts. This may affect the planting boom - as demands sours.

The spring (Feb-March-April) can still surprise. The "Miracle March" of 1991 -- 13" in March, '91 locally -- saved irrigation in an otherwise devastatingly dry year.

Re: California drought declaration

As I have posted elsewhere I think there is gonna be a big impact on Queen and package production? I've already decided honey production isn't happening no matter what happens from here on out. Not many agree with me yet but with another 10 day forecast of dry weather and another new high building in off the coast the nice weather walking us down the path to destruction is gonna change some minds when queens aren't available and packages go to $130.00. The guys with the Hawaiian queen operations have got to be chomping at the bit to deliver their wheelbarrels full of cash to the bank come this fall. Market price is gonna soar.

Re: California drought declaration

The queen producers I've visited feed all season anyway, not sure how it will affect them.
It cut our summer honey big time last year. we got less than 1/2 what we predicted. Spring was just a little below average.

Re: California drought declaration

Originally Posted by KQ6AR

The queen producers I've visited feed all season anyway, not sure how it will affect them.

What is the correlation between pollen availability and queen production and quality? Do you think there is any? If so are the current conditions adverse enough to warrant concern about the droughts implications on queen "raising? " Can we "fake" pollen(substitutes) like we can fake honey (syrup) during queen development, mating, and laying?????

Re: California drought declaration

Maybe Moonbeam will cancel the bullet train to nowhere and put some of those billions towards diverting some of the delta water for irrigation instead of releasing it into the ocean.... Never mind thats a terrible idea I forgot about the delta smelt.... I'll shut up now.....

Re: California drought declaration

You make a good point, probably more important than the fact they are fed HFCS instead of honey. Thanks

Originally Posted by Honey-4-All

What is the correlation between pollen availability and queen production and quality? Do you think there is any? If so are the current conditions adverse enough to warrant concern about the droughts implications on queen "raising? " Can we "fake" pollen(substitutes) like we can fake honey (syrup) during queen development, mating, and laying?????

Yeah I'm getting a sinking feeling about 2014 for a lot of us, agriculture-wise. Hopefully it won't be bad, though. In the meantime, hang in there as best you can. Try to think happy thoughts or something...

Beeless since 2012; coming back in 2014. Suffering from apicultural withdrawal!

Re: California drought declaration

Slightly off topic... driving through San Luis Obispo to San Simeon today I noticed several large holding yards with several hundred single deeps. All around here is only dry grass, brown hills and not much else. What are the bees going to pollinate? Is there a crop coming online soon that requires so many bees in this area? Just curious...